Doug Kass' 50 Laws Of Investing

I beg to differ.

The NUMBER ONE rule of winning at investing is to get politically connected and get insider trading from political friends. (BUT WAIT. That’s illegal.....right?)

Two. Don’t take investing advice from poor people. I had one guy telling me to buy a certain crypto. “buy buy buy” he said. “It’s going to the moon just like bitcoin and etherium and dog coin.” It lost 50% of it’s “value” the next morning.

I have never lost buying new software or equipment for my business. Never.

Good points, but let's look at this in more detail:

1. The influence of compounding interest that drives your overall interest cost up for 30-year mortgage also drives up the value of your $4.59 per month at 7%. Under your scenario, by the end of your 15th year you'd owe about $258,000 on the 30-year mortgage and would have more than $332,000 in your investment account.

2. One of the lessons an astute financial observer should have learned in 2008-09 is that the homeowner bears a ton of risk even if there is no mortgage on the property. If you paid $300,000 cash for a home in 2007 and then the market crashed a year later and it lost a third of its value, you're out $100,000 immediately. If you had put the $300,000 aside in 2007 and financed the entire purchase price of the property, you'd be underwater with a $300,000 mortgage on a home that's only worth $200,000 ... but you'd still have the $300,000 you DIDN'T pay in cash for the home. In the scenario with the large mortgage, it's the bank that carries the biggest risk. Even if you had to sell the home for a loss of $100,000 you could still fulfill your obligation and pay off the entire mortgage.

3. The other thing we learned in 2008 is that the world changed dramatically over the course of 30+ years -- to the point where a mortgage is one of the easiest forms of debt to renegotiate with a bank. It's almost impossible to default on a student loan. If you default on an auto loan your car will be repossessed. During the Bush administration Congress made it more difficult to default on credit card debt. But when the crap hit the fan in 2008, banks were bending over backwards to accommodate delinquent mortgage holders -- because they never want to take possession of an expensive asset that carries thousands of dollars a year in taxes and maintenance costs. If you own your home free and clear with NO mortgage, there's nobody bending over backwards to accommodate you!

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